Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, who pleaded guilty in August to breaking campaign finance laws, made a surprise appearance in a Manhattan courtroom on Thursday morning and pleaded guilty to a new criminal charge, the latest turn in the special counsel’s investigation of Mr. Trump and his inner circle.

At the court hearing, Mr. Cohen admitted to making false statements to Congress about his efforts to build a Trump Tower deal in Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign. That real estate deal has been a focus of the special counsel investigation into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russian operatives.

In written testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. Cohen played down the extent of his contact with the Kremlin about the potential project and made other false statements about the negotiations, which never led to a final deal.

…The new guilty plea in Federal District Court marks the first time the office of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has charged Mr. Cohen. In exchange for pleading guilty and continuing to cooperate with Mr. Mueller, he may hope to receive a lighter sentence than he otherwise would.

From the plea deal:

“I made these statements to be consistent with Individual-1’s political messaging and to be loyal to Individual-1,” Cohen said in court.

Trump addresses Michael Cohen guilty plea: "What he's trying to do is get a reduced sentence. So he's lying about a project that everybody knew about. We were very open with it." pic.twitter.com/fVftlAQFmk

If that was going to be an issue, it would have been an issue for the search warrants. It wasn’t. Now that Cohen has “admitted” that his legal advice to Trump was in furtherance of crimes, of course it won’t be privileged. He’s a mob lawyer, so privilege doesn’t apply. Of course it won’t.

The privilege belongs to the client. It is very unusual for an attorney to provide prosecutors with open ended access to what he claims were his communications with his client. Even John Gotti’s Attorney, Bruce Cutler never did that, despite even more intense pressure from Federal Prosecutors. In fact the Judge in the Gotti case gave Cutler some measure of protection from prosecutors even though he was sanctioned.

If Mueller is not in full compliance with Rule 502, a new and aggressive Attorney-General can come back at with 18 U.S.C. 242 allegations.

But this is politics not law. Mueller is looking for anything to take down Trump and he does not care how he gets it. The information is to give to Congress for an impeachment, not for a Court.

I’m not a lawyer so maybe I’m missing something here.
These things are used to apply leverage as they move up the food chain but so far there doesn’t seem to be anything that leads to the President, family, or the campaign itself.
Maybe he has information on other people to be charged or something that will bring pressure on someone else but collusion by Trump or his campaign hasn’t been shown.
How much of this same type of pressure or this level of scrutiny could the Clinton family and campaign undergo without any smoking gun?

And here comes the difference between singing and composing. I suspect the conversation went somewhat like this (paraphrased):

Prosecution: “Tell us you told Trump about the Russia meeting before it happened.”
Cohen: “But I didn’t tell him.”
Prosecution: “Then we’ll put you in jail for a century and bankrupt your family.”
Cohen: “Um… When did you want me to say I told him?”

Well, I’m convinced this absolutely isn’t what many have said – Mueller operating as some sort of Deep State operative. He obviously believes he’s doing the right thing. Only a true believer goes this far, to prosecute what Alan Dershowitz calls crimes that would not have existed save for Mueller’s appointment as Special Counsel.

He seems to truly, deeply believe that Manafort was either employed as a Russian agent of influence himself, or traded favors with other people who were, and therefore hiring him was tantamount to putting an agent of the KGB in as manager of the Trump campaign. Mueller just can’t buy the simple explanation – Manafort was a political mercenary willing to work for Ukrainian quasi-dictators, and even stoop to the likes of Donald Trump. (As Washington sees it, mind.) Therefore, he just has to shake the tree hard enough and long enough until people admit to what Mueller “knows” to be true.

Well, I’m convinced Mueller is corrupt to the very core.
I’m convinced Mueller would do anything he thinks he can get away with to convict Trump and protect Clinton.
I’m convinced Mueller is a crook, one that should be in jail in a truly just society.

Our system of justice is broken. People like Mueller are the breakers.

You just stepped in it, without knowing. All of this serves several different objectives. One is warning anyone that might go to work for President Trump, that their livlyhood is at risk. The deep state will dig deep and go as far as bribing people to put themselves at risk and lie, to frame you for some horrible thing, like making out with a girl at a party when you were sixteen.
You’ve got Pappadopolus and Carter Page. Framed for having the nerve to work on a political campaign. Its a warning about supporting President Trump.
And the this whole thing is a warning to any outsider that would dare to come to DC without being invited.